Yours, Isabel
Based on real-life letters written by a pair of young lovers during World War II, Christy Hall's two-hander is best described as unremarkable, unable to make its epistolary form sufficiently dramatic. More »

Madame Butterfly
Director Aramazd Stepanian's production of David Belasco's 1900 Broadway melodrama is stylistically precise but moves at a glacial pace and offers a mixed bag of performances. More »

Sidetracked
Billed as a "dramedy" but more closely resembling a zany film-noir spoof, Sharon Michaels' new play never commits to a cohesive style, and Ray A. Rochelle's flaccid direction doesn't help. More »

Old Wicked Songs
Stephanie Vlahos directs Jon Marans' two-hander about a pianist and his professor, a 1996 Pulitzer Prize nominee, with a keen eye for comedy and a sharp awareness of its emotional and musical nuances. More »

Rooms: A Rock Romance
Paul Scott Goodman and Miriam Gordon's 2009 Off-Broadway musical weaves a story that's sweet but not saccharine, quirky but not strange, and just offbeat enough to capture and keep our attention. More »

Elemeno Pea
South Coast Repertory's new artistic director, Marc Masterson, makes an auspicious bow directing this highly satisfying L.A. premiere of Molly Smith Metzler's caustically funny and bracingly incisive social satire. More »

Finding Fossils
In its L.A. premiere, Ty DeMartino's modest family play feels about as close to an old-fashioned kitchen-sink drama as a story taking place on a country porch can get. More »

God of Carnage
Director Caryn Desai and a fine cast of four wring plentiful laughs from Yasmina Reza's black comedy that shows how thin the veneer of civilization really is. More »

Expecting to Fly
Michael Hyman's long one-act takes its title from the Neil Young song and tells a tale of passionate love and loss, touching on issues of faith and trust, with elements of the supernatural. More »

El Nogalar (The Pecan Orchard)
Tanya Saracho's loose adaptation of "The Cherry Orchard," transplanted to modern-day Mexico, reaches out in exciting new directions, though a few too many Chekhovian promissory notes don't pay off. More »

Hunger: In Bed With Roy Cohn
With all the trappings of a confectionary acid trip, director Jules Aaron crafts a sensory-teasing hallucinatory peek into the backstory of one of America's most enigmatic figures in Joan Beber's new play. More »

Art
Yasmina Reza's comedy is in fine hands in director David Lee's revival, which is graced with the consummate talents and sterling chemistry of actors Roger Bart, Michael O'Keefe, and Bradley Whitford. More »

Masterpieces
Sarah Daniels' dark and daring 1983 comedy about women and pornography sometimes borders on sermonizing, but director Cinda Jackson's solid production provides a compelling experience. More »

The Indians Are Coming to Dinner
Impeccably acted and exquisitely designed, director Julia Fletcher's rendition of Jennifer W. Rowland's eccentric new play, which mixes smart literary allusions to Greek tragedy and opera, scores a bull's-eye. More »

Clybourne Park
Bruce Norris' hilarious Pulitzer Prize–winning satire arrives in L.A. with cast, director, and design team intact from its 2010 Playwrights Horizons Off-Broadway staging, prior to a planned Broadway bow. More »

Moon Over Buffalo
After scoring with revivals of "Light Up the Sky" and "Room Service," director Bjørn Johnson manages a theatrical hat trick by staging Ken Ludwig's faintly synthetic crowd pleaser with revivifying brio. More »

The Water's Edge
Theresa Rebeck's 2001 family drama, a contemporary take on part of Aeschylus' "The Oresteia," never reaches the full dramatic heights of Greek tragedy, but it's a satisfying modern-day rendering. More »

The 39 Steps
Patrick Barlow’s stage adaptation is a cheeky retelling, much along the lines of Monty Python, of Alfred Hitchcock’s signature 1935 film and the John Buchan novel on which it’s based. More »

A Raisin in the Sun
Director Phylicia Rashad's restaging of her Ebony Repertory Theatre production of Lorraine Hansberry's landmark drama affords her a fresh opportunity to mine the classic material for its myriad dramatic riches. More »

No Good Deed
Though Matt Pelfrey's subversive dark comedy needs to bring its complex narrative and heady themes into focus more quickly and lucidly, director Dámaso Rodriguez's visceral staging makes for an intellectually stimulating ride. More »

Oswald
Dennis Richard's thought-provoking docudrama tries to imagine what happened during the police interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald, presenting intriguing details that allow us to form our own conclusions. More »

Our Town
In its L.A. premiere, director David Cromer's immensely entertaining and deeply affecting revival of Thornton Wilder's masterpiece is vibrantly fresh yet faithful to the playwright's enduring vision. More »

Days of Wine and Roses
Director Rebecca Hayes' bare-bones production is blessed with two shattering lead performances, eliciting raw emotional power from J.P. Miller's classic drama about alcoholism. More »

Awake in a World That Encourages Sleep
Although sometimes outlandish in how it delivers its message, actor-playwright Raymond J. Barry's dark absurdist comedy has originality and a full-throttle attack that are unmistakable. More »

God's Ear
It's the surreal disconnect that infects a family after a tragedy that allows Jenny Schwartz's theatrical study of grief to float in a kind of magical, freeform way. More »